ACL compiles a daily media monitoring service of stories of interest to the Christian constituency relating to children, family, drugs and alcohol, marriage, human rights, religious freedom etc. Visit the ACL’s website each day to see what’s of interest in the news. Please note that selection of the articles does not represent ACL endorsement of the content.

He was just 20 minutes away from home and his family when good samaritan Walid El-Helou stopped to help at a highway pile-up. But that simple act of kindness cost Mr El-Helou his life - and robbed six children of their father and left his loving wife a widow.

The Australian Communication and Media Authority has ruled the Seven Network breached part of the broadcast code with its new promos for the charmingly titled coming drama Good Christian Bitches. Some promos featured a blonde woman, dressed in skin-tight hotpants with a live python and the words ''Good Christian Bitches'', were shown during last November's The X-Factor finale, before 8.30pm. Complaints came - one from the Christian group Family Voice Australia - and the authority has ruled the station breached part of the code which stipulates promos should not contain ''coarse language other than of a very mild nature''.

As 100 world leaders jetted away from the first Rio de Janeiro ''Earth Summit'' in 1992, the conference chairman, Canadian entrepeneur Maurice Strong, wept as he told journalists the gathering would fail to avert ecological tragedy unless citizens forced their governments to implement the watered-down agreements the meeting had clinched. The citizens of the world didn't. But 20 years later, that first Rio meeting - held in the optimistic glow after the fall of the Iron Curtain - is considered a reasonable success. It did at least reach agreement on three legally binding global treaties - on climate change, biodiversity and desertification - and on an international ''agenda'' for sustainable development.

Activists are set to gather in Western Sydney to mark the fifth anniversary of the Northern Territory intervention and protest income management in Aboriginal communities. The rally in Bankstown will call for the immediate withdrawal of the government's Stronger Futures legislation, ahead of the Senate debate on Monday, organisers said.

Same-sex marriage legislation will be debated for the first time in the lower house of federal parliament today. It will follow the release of findings of a committee of inquiry into two bills on legalising same-sex marriage. Labor will be allowing a conscience vote on the issue, but the Coalition says its MPs must vote against it.

The Salvation Army is facing a backlash after its online anti-homosexuality and gay marriage stance sparked a social media boycott campaign. Gay pop star Darren Hayes - the face of '90s hit machine Savage Garden, Logan's most famous musical export and a current mentor on The Voice - has called for the boycott. The Salvos responded last night by pointing out they helped Australia's most marginalised and needy, including gay and transgender people. The Federal Government will release its report on gay marriage today.

Legislating for same-sex marriage will change the meaning of marriage for everyone and will radically reshape cultural and social structures, according to a pastoral letter in defence of marriage issued by the Sydney Archdiocese this week. It has been prompted by ongoing debate on same-sex marriage, and outlines the Church’s case for marriage, including that same-sex marriage will not remove discrimination and injustice but cause them. “Marriage is more than having one’s love for another legally recognised,” states the letter from the Archbishop of Sydney, George Cardinal Pell and the auxiliary bishops, Bishops Julian Porteous, Terry Brady and Peter Comensoli.

Leaders of Sydney's major Christian churches will make a coordinated appeal against same-sex marriage straight from the pulpit this weekend in a bid to rally opposition before the federal parliamentary vote. Statements from Anglican, Catholic and Greek Orthodox church leaders will be read out or distributed at services, stressing the need to head off any change to the current definition of marriage.

Republican White House challenger Mitt Romney, wooing social conservatives, has adamantly rejected same-sex marriage and trumpeted his belief in Christian values and the family. Three days after Barack Obama became the first US president to back gay and lesbian marriage, Romney told university graduates that the "pre-eminence of the family" remains at the heart of the principles that underpin the nation.

An indigenous missionary from nearby Lebanon crossed the border to baptize a believer last week. Instead, he had to bury the believer -- shot in the head as a martyr for his recently-found faith in Jesus Christ. Native missionaries continue to share Gospel CD's, baptizing new believers, and delivering food and medical aid to suffering Christians in Syria while violence rages around them.

On Monday, Peter Singer added yet another medal to his trophy cabinet – an Order of Australia. He was given the laurel for his “eminent service to philosophy and bioethics as a leader of public debate and communicator of ideas”. However, just because someone sparks “debate” and “communicates ideas” doesn’t make them an eminent intellectual. Singer has spent his career proposing outlandish theories, and in the process had a pretty nasty influence on our society. He should not have been given our highest civic honour.

Lindy and Michael's total exoneration is a relief for them, of course, but the Coroner's conclusion is a relief for us all. To be certain a young mother did not take the life of her own baby helps to restore our faith in human nature. If the young and helpless are not always protected among us, what kind of society do we belong to? Ironically for some, we belong to the kind of society that awarded Australia's highest civil honour to the philosopher Peter Singer on Monday. Singer has been made a Companion of Australia for "eminent service to philosophy and bioethics as a leader of public debate and communicator of ideas in the areas of global poverty, animal welfare and the human condition". There is something naive about this catalogue of Singer's achievements. Around the world, his name is synonymous with arguments that legitimise infanticide.

Men who have sex with men accounted for 86% of diagnoses of newly acquired HIV infection [within Australia]. Exposure to HIV was attributed to heterosexual contact and injecting drug use in 10% and 1%, respectively, of diagnoses of newly acquired HIV infection. (page 11 - figure 5)